My Grandmother’s Golden Matzo Pancakes Are a Passover Should

My grandmother grew up in a family wealthy with Ashkenazi Jewish cooking, which I might by no means have recognized have been it not for a surviving doc her twin brother, my great-uncle Shush, as soon as wrote to catalog the meals of their youth. I’ve written about this letter earlier than, in my article on how one can make chopped liver, however let’s simply say that Shush was not a fan of a lot of these meals, quite a lot of which concerned offal.

Of all of the dishes their Latvian-immigrant mom made by hand, in the present day I acknowledge the names of only some—and gefilte fish is acquainted to me not as a result of my great-grandmother’s recipe survived by the generations, however as a result of my mother would generally purchase it in a jar. The failure of conventional meals like miltz (spleen), p’tcha (calf’s-foot aspic), and lungen (lungs) to keep up a foothold in my household is not a lot of a shock, given how a lot Shush, and presumably his siblings, hated them.

However there was one dish that he clearly cherished—matzo pancakes, which he referred to as pompishkehs.* Throughout Passover, he wrote, “we ate pancakes product of matzo meal sprinkled with powdered sugar…a meal to be classed with the gustatory creations of all time…. Made hotcakes seem to be an aberration.” The primary time I learn his letter, my coronary heart leapt on the point out of pancakes produced from matzo meal: I do know these! They have been the one, the solely, dish my sister and I begged for after we visited our bubbe, who would prepare dinner us a batch in a matter of minutes and serve them with granulated sugar on the facet to sprinkle on prime.

*The closest factor I might discover after a fast internet seek for “pompishkeh” was a Ukrainian fritter referred to as a pampushka, which, being yeasted, would not be kosher for Passover. In Claudia Roden’s The Guide of Jewish Meals, she makes use of the phrases chremslach and bubeleh for these matzo pancakes.

Right here, lastly, was my cultural inheritance: little ovals of egg and crushed unleavened cracker. Modest certainly, but additionally inarguably tasty. A meal to be classed with the gustatory creations of all time, as Uncle Shush hailed them? I would not go that far—foie gras, tacos, and sushi would rightly be offended by the notion—however they definitely provide an ease-to-deliciousness ratio that is onerous to beat.

Begin by smashing matzo into irregular bits and items. How small you make them is a matter of private selection—I like a combination, with some wonderful bits and a few chunky, however you’ll be able to go very wonderful, all the way in which all the way down to the dimensions of matzo meal (the finely floor stuff that is additionally used to make matzo balls).

Subsequent, soak them in chilly water for a minute or two to melt them. Drain the water, combine in overwhelmed eggs and a pinch of salt, then prepare dinner dollops of what I suppose we are able to name the “batter” in a buttered pan.

The matzo capabilities just like the floury part of a pancake or fritter batter, however as a result of the flour used to make the matzo was already hydrated and cooked when the matzo was made, getting it moist once more and binding it with egg is all that must be executed this second time.

A bonus is that each one the nice and cozy, toasty notes of the already-baked matzo wind up within the last pancakes, that are then griddled, similar to traditional pancakes, leading to layers of browned taste.

Readers conversant in Jewish meals might acknowledge these pancakes as a type of matzo brei, an egg-and-matzo creation that takes many shapes and is available in each candy and savory types. I might agree that they’re, or no less than appear to be, roughly the identical factor. The principle distinction is that matzo pancakes need to be formed like, nicely, pancakes, and might be made with both damaged matzo, as in my recipe right here, or matzo meal. So far as I do know, matzo brei would by no means name for matzo meal, and it may be made extra like an egg scramble, or a big, cooked egg-and-matzo mass, or something in between.

I have been cooking matzo pancakes quite a bit just lately for my son, who’s one and a half now. Not solely is it one of many best breakfasts I can toss collectively for him, it is also the one unbroken chain of recipe heritage I’ve to move on. It is not a lot, however you would not understand it from how enthusiastically he gobbles them up.

April 2019

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